‘ No, we’re moving that to tomorrow, ’ she said into the receiver. ‘ I don’t care what you have to shift around, we’ve been shifting things around too. ’ The few days post the Royal Christmas Party already had Carolina’s work phone, email and cell phone ( for the few industry colleagues who wanted to call in a favor ) chiming in a chorus of rings and beeps, trying to get an in into the family’s already busy schedule. Her friend at The Telegraph emailed her first thing the morning after, asking for an exclusive statement from her about what happened to warrant a temporary lockdown. Carolina was insulted that there was hardly any nuance in the email and promptly deleted it with no further deliberation. In fact, in the past three days, she’s deleted over two hundred messages asking about the same thing without a reply.
It’s not that she doesn’t understand; of course she does, jobs in communication are all interconnected and they should all work together, but, God, does she hate journalists. At least the ones she can’t manipulate but that’s a story for another time. They’re all about self-interest and are so blinded by their ambition that they don’t realize that there are more than two sides to a story. It’s all about winners and losers; heroes and villains; saints and sinners. No gray areas; no inbetweens. And now with the still dire situation of a missing princess, there is no way that any of them are getting anything besides the general statement released by the Communications Office.
Carolina penned down the exhausted confirmation from the person on the other end onto her desktop planner, wishing them a Happy Holiday before hanging up. She sighs tiredly and looks into her coffee mug. It’s empty, what a shame. She should just ask one of the interns to grab her another refill, but she needs to get up and walk around. Dejectedly, she gets up from her seat and grabs her mug and ( with a second thought ) her cell phone and steps away from her desk.
She decides to forgo the coffee they have in the small kitchen in their offices and heads out to the main palace to siphon coffee from the kitchens. Carolina’s friendly with one of the cooks, having traded her grandmother’s lamb stew recipe for access to hand ground imported coffee. She walked into a hallway and found someone else in the halls. ‘ Why hello, ’ she greeted. ‘ I thought you would have other things to do. ’
He usually avoided the castle, his family, and more so any drama at any cost. He figured the Holidays would be full of them, since he kind of thought his family had a flare for the dramatic. Not to mention that this Holiday season was the first without his aunt. Though he and his aunt weren’t close, he still loved her and he still misses her.
“Who me?” He asked, stopping himself from running into each other. “Oh well I thought I would too.” He shrugged. “I honestly don’t know why I’m here.” He wanted to ask where Charlotte was, if they had found her. Sure Toby had known, but he wasn’t exactly in the loop and he knew for sure that they wouldn’t be notifying him first. Charlotte was his cousin and although they weren’t particularly close, he was still worried about her. He wasn’t heartless. Would she even know?
More importantly, he wanted to know if Arabella would be safe. He wanted to get her out of the castle, if Charlotte was missing, who knew who would go missing next? He was not going to just sit here and watch his sister stay in danger. Maybe that’s why he had decided to make an appearance here. He needed to make sure that she was okay. “I’m glad I ran into you, though. Are you busy? If not, I’d love to be able to speak with you.”
